Revenge of the Possum Part 2: A New Hope

(Continued from Part 1)

The second comment I received on the possum story came in April of this year. "Oxankle" started out his comment positively:

I have no sympathy for possums; they are indeed vermin and have killed uncounted numbers of chickens for me. I killed a possum this morning and six within the past three weeks.

Finally, some sympathy, right? Not quite:

However; Anon was right when he said that you, Ed, went about it the wrong way. When we inflict show death, pain, suffering on a living creature we diminish our own humanity. You could very easily have taken the possum by the tail with your gardening gloves, pulled it from the hole and dispatched it quickly.

I do not even have anything against the use of the sword, but you have to know how to use it efficiently. Imagine how you would have suffered had you taken a gut thrust and been left on the field.

Unfortunately there are millions of people who know so little about wildlife that they cannot do what our ancestors did as a matter of routine.

I went from "Ed, you're a horrible inhuman beast" in the first comment, to "Ed, if you're gonna kill a possum, at least learn how to do it right".

In my response, I had to agree with Oxankle:

Admittedly, I'm not a swordsman, nor am I a nature expert. For what it's worth, my intent was to kill the possum quickly. I failed.

At least I can admit when I am wrong.